Practice ladder, structured text, and FBD on your MacBook or iMac directly in the browser. Works on Apple Silicon and Intel. No Parallels. No Windows licence. No TIA Portal.
Join 1300+ learners practicing PLC programming
If you landed here because macOS showed you a process or notification labelled "PLC" and you are wondering what it is — you are probably not looking for PLC programming software. There are a few things on a Mac that use the abbreviation PLC:
If none of those match what you are seeing, a safe first step is to open Activity Monitor (Applications → Utilities → Activity Monitor) and search for the process name to see which app owns it.
If you are looking for PLC programming — Programmable Logic Controller software — on your Mac, read on. That is exactly what this page covers.
The problem
Every major vendor PLC tool is Windows-first and has been for two decades. TIA Portal is Windows-only. Studio 5000 is Windows-only. Codesys IDE is Windows-only. Factory IO is Windows-only. LogixPro is Windows-only. On a Mac — whether an Intel iMac or an M3 MacBook — none of those install natively.
The orthodox workaround is Parallels Desktop (~$100/yr) + a Windows licence (~$200 one-off for Home) + a vendor PLC IDE licence (TIA Portal €1,200+/yr, Studio 5000 $5,500+/yr). That is roughly $1,500–$2,500 per year before a single rung is written — and Apple Silicon adds its own complications because Windows 11 on ARM has to emulate x86 for most PLC tools, which carries a 30–50% performance penalty and occasionally breaks installs outright. Then there is the keyboard layout tax: every Windows shortcut expects Ctrl where the Mac has ⌘, and no VM fixes this well.
Workarounds
$100 Parallels + ~$200 Windows + €1,200/yr TIA Portal. Keyboard layout breaks constantly. On M-series, the x86 emulation layer drags performance, and some TIA Portal V17 installs outright refuse to complete.
Free, but ARM Windows emulation of x86 vendor tools is hit-and-miss. Spend a day and you might get a working stack; spend another day and an update breaks it.
Monthly fee. Latency on every click. Copy-paste between Mac and remote session is awkward. RDP on a restrictive network often fails.
Apple removed Boot Camp from Apple Silicon. If you still have an Intel Mac this works, but you have to dedicate the boot session and reboot to cross back to macOS.
Works until you want to practise on a weekend and the laptop is at the office.
Codesys IDE is Windows-only too — same problem. The runtime is cross-platform, but that does not help you write code.
Native in the browser
Runs in Safari, Chrome, Edge, or Firefox. No Rosetta, no Wine, no VM. Apple Silicon GPU drives the canvas at full hardware acceleration.
⌘-based shortcuts for save, copy, paste, undo — the editor respects Mac conventions rather than fighting them.
Install via Safari's Share → "Add to Dock" or Chrome's "Install App". Launches in its own window, shows up in Launchpad, works offline for cached scenarios.
What actually runs on Mac
This is not a ladder toy. You write IEC 61131-3 ladder and structured text, a real scan-cycle runtime executes it, and the same logic transfers to TIA Portal or Studio 5000 when you eventually move to a Windows deployment machine. Here is what you practise on your Mac.
Getting started
Time from "I want to learn PLCs on my Mac" to "first rung running": under two minutes.
Performance expectations
What you can practise on Mac
Practice Allen-Bradley style code on Mac (AB simulator) or Siemens TIA Portal style (Siemens simulator) — no Windows VM required.
Free tier on any Mac. First rung in under two minutes.
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